Norte Maar is pleased to participate in the 20th Edition of Salon Zürcher with a cross-generational exhibition of four women artists: Hermine Ford, Judith Dolnick, Libby Hartle and Joan Witek.

Described by Hyperallergic as “an alternative and more intimate way to view emerging artists and galleries,” and by The New York Times as a “respite from [big art fair] chaos,” Salon Zürcher represents an emerging art world by providing an exciting and personable viewing experience.

Norte Maar in 2013 presented a major loan exhibition titled To be a Lady. Curated by Jason Andrew for Norte Maar, this exhibition featured forty-five artists born over the last century who happen to be women. Striking examples by historic protagonists, Ruth Asawa, Lee Bontecou, Louise Bourgeois, Grace Hartigan, Alice Neel, and Alma Thomas, set the stage for an exhibition that also included mid-career and emerging work by women artists.

Continuing Norte Maar’s ongoing support and promotion of the work of women artists, for Salon Zürcher, Norte Maar revisits this exhibition with a special week-long presentation of four artists that were featured in that 2013 show with important works of theirs from the past and present.

Exhibiting Artists:

Hermine Ford (b.1939) reclaims oddly shaped forms and sophisticated color schemes from nature as well as man-made architectural structures. Patterned and decorative elements left as debris by crumbling ancient cities are touchstones of place and time that inform a rich vocabulary of motifs and marks that make up Ford’s work. On view at Salon Zürcher will be six new mixed-media drawings on paper.

Judith Dolnick (b. 1934) for nearly six decades has been painting light, brightly colored, nonfigurative works through seemingly random, puddles and stains, lines and shapes that at times take on clear, sometimes familiar but ultimately abstract pictorial configurations. Visually sophisticated, she has been a contemporary answer to Paul Gauguin and Raoul Dufy. On view at the Salon Zürcher will be selected watercolors from the 70s.

Libby Hartle (b.1976) combines drawing and collage to create steely works of simple geometric patterns: a diamond, a chevron. After layering graphite mark upon mark, Hartle cuts and reassembles them into a prepared matrix. These new accurately defined shapes play off their random gestural beginnings and offer a duality of spontaneity and order. The layered marks provide a sense of time passing while emergent structures become fleeting moments of visual grounding. On view at Salon Zürcher are recent graphite collage works on paper.

Joan Witek (b.1943) has used the color black for her life as an artist on canvas, paper and film. While ostensibly simple and easily grasped there is an ongoing language of proportion and meaning in this abstraction for her. Black is usually considered the absence of color: it is severe, rigorous, associated with death, or depression or repression. The works reflect a rhythmic and calculated approach to mark making. On view at Salon Zürcher will be a selection of Witek’s oil paint and newspaper transfer collage on panel from the early 90s.